


Try and try again

by Aegir



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canon Torture and Brainwashing references, Civil War Credits Scene, Fix-It, Gen, Post-Civil War (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 06:43:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11823342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aegir/pseuds/Aegir
Summary: “Riiiight,” Sam says.  “And neither of you geniuses thought that a torture survivor asking to be treated in the exact same way his torturers treated him should be running up all sorts of red flags about whether he really wanted this, or whether he was so screwed up he thought it was what he deserved.  Especially after being mind-raped and having an arm blown off just the in last three days.  Because we all know stuff like that never affects someone’s ability to think clearly.  Red flags the size of Times Square."Or: What should have happened after the Civil War mid-credits scene





	Try and try again

**Author's Note:**

> So: I've been trying to write out my feelings about the Civil War mid-credits scene for over a year, and for now this is all I can manage. More on my thoughts about it at the end.
> 
> Warnings for everything you'd expect to need warning for when discussing the Winter Soldier's past history

Steve had pictured it as awaking from sleep.  Maybe waking up with some difficulty, after a restless night, but still like a regular morning.

It’s not like that at all.  Bucky’s skin is grey and clammy looking, his muscles keep spasming  involuntarily.  Small groans of pain are being torn from him, the sounds all the worse because he is so clearly fighting to supress them.  He looks twice as bad as when the frost crept over him, and he’d still been showing signs of battle them

Steve had felt OK when he was woken after seventy years.  A bit stiff, a bit drained, but nothing like this.  Was that because his serum is different or because of SHIELD drugging techniques?  Doesn’t matter.  He’s never going to refer to cyrofreeze as sleep again.

The worst moment is when Bucky’s eyes fix on his, dead empty eyes, and he says, in a voice that is a broken rasp, “Ready to comply.”

Steve may have lost it a bit at that point.  At all events he ends up being hustled out of the room while medical staff swirl around Bucky.

“Someone must have got in there,” he says numbly.  “The book Zemo had…”

“Doubt it,” Sam says.  “Look, this is a guy with major trauma levels, who has just been put through one of the things that caused his trauma all over again.  This is a drastic thing that was forced on him over and over.  Didn’t it occur to you doing it to him again might cause a massive set-back?”

“Tell me you at least gave him anaesthetic before freezing him,” says Nat, in a slightly strangled voice.

“He did not ask for it.” T’Challa sounds almost as sick as Steve feels.

“And none of you thought that after years of being treated as a thing, not a person, he might not be good at asking at stuff for himself?” Sam rolls his eyes sarcastically.  “I thought this country was supposed to be smart.”

“In defence of my medical team,” T’Challa says swiftly, “When I showed them the records you brought in yesterday they were very unhappy.  In fact I have already had a lecture on laboratory scientists, such as myself, failing to understand the human element.”

“But he was asking for something he wanted,” Steve says numbly.  “He wanted this.  He did.”

“Riiiight,” Sam says.  “And neither of you geniuses thought that a torture survivor asking to be treated _in the exact same way his torturers treated him_ should be running up all sorts of red flags about whether he really wanted this, or whether he was so screwed up he thought it was what he deserved.  Especially after being mind-raped and having an arm blown off just the in last three days.  Because we all know stuff like that never affects someone’s ability to think clearly.  Red flags the size of _Times Square_.

“You know what?  I’m going for a walk.  There’s only so much dumbness I can tolerate in a morning.”

The door doesn’t exactly slam, because apparently Wakandan facility doors are slam resistant, but the intention was clearly there.

Steve closes his eyes.  Sam had seemed in such a good mood on the flight to Wakanda, joking about challenging Black Panther to a race, then bringing his wings.  As far as Steve knew Sam didn’t even particularly like Bucky. 

“It was a bad decision,” T’Challa says.  “I wanted to give your friend help because I thought it would help me to forgive myself for not saving my father.  I did not think enough about whether this was really help or not.”

“He’s not just Steve’s friend,”   Natasha says.  “He has a name.  And a point of view.  And I think we’ve all been forgetting that.  I was so sure Steve was emotionally compromised I didn’t stop to consider how many things didn’t stand up.  Why would Barnes bomb the UN of his own accord?  There had to be a bigger picture and I wasn’t seeing it.”

“It was my fault as well,” Steve says heavily.  He had been compromised, just not quite in the way Natasha had thought.  “I was so glad to have something that could be fixed by punching, I played right into Zemo’s hands.  I should have called you in Berlin, after Bucky told me about the other Soldiers, instead of believing I could break the law with no consequences.”

“We all messed up,” Nat says.  “And with Barnes… I think I didn’t want to see a person because it was too much like looking in a mirror.  Thinking you deserve to be punished is something I get.”

“You believe that was what it was?  He was punishing himself?”

“Are you sure you weren’t doing the same, Steve?  Were you thinking about whether it was really a good idea to do that to him, or were you seeing only the last link to your past, and thinking you deserved to lose it as a punishment for messing up?”  Steve flinches.  “What were you really fighting for?  Justice for Barnes, or a chance to swap stories about the Good Old Days, now you can’t do that with Peggy Carter any longer?   I talked to Sharon.”

“Sharon?”  Steve is thrown by the abrupt change of subject.

“I was so sure she’d be right for you.  But she said you were seeing someone else when you kissed her.  What were you seeing when you looked at Barnes?”

“He remembered,” Steve whispers.  “He did.”

“And if he hadn’t?” Nat says.  “If there was no chance of him ever remembering?  Would you still think he was worth it?”

~~~

It’s several hours before the Wakandan doctors tell Steve Bucky is ready to see people.  He still looks worn, but the horrible blankness has gone.

“Why did you bring me out if there’s no cure?” he says bluntly, and Steve, as he had throughout the all too short time they had spent together, finds himself searching for traces of the Bucky of Brooklyn, asking if it is that Bucky’s forthrightness coming through.

“I…” Steve starts.  And then stops.  “I needed to be sure this is what you want.”  He knows its lame even before Bucky’s face is wiped of what little expression it had, before he says, “You asked me that.”  He sounds so defeated, the way he’d sounded when he said, ‘But I did it,’ on the quinjet, and the words stick as hard in Steve’s throat now as they did then. 

T’Challa steps in.  “It was too hasty,” he says.  “We were all deeply shaken.  Now we are concerned you could have felt quite differently if you had been given more time to recover and think about other possibilities.”

“Unless you can fix me there are no possibilities.”  Bucky’s eyes flicker from T’Challa to Natasha, without meeting Steve’s.  “You were there, in Berlin.  I can’t risk that happening again.”

“Yes, I was there,” T’Challa says.  “And I was here, when we brought you out the tomb.”  Steve can’t repress a shudder when T’Challa speaks in that way, yet he had always thought of his own time in the ice as a kind of death.  “You were so weakened, it would be utterly easy for anyone who could get past our defences to read the words to you.  I have confidence in the security here, but if it should fail, would it not be better to be able to defend yourself?”

That seems to give Bucky pause, his eyes slide downwards.  After a pause, he says, “Easier for you if I’m in there.   It’s not just the codes.  I’m not right.  Best for everyone if you lock me away.”

“Everyone?” Nat says.  “Does that include you?  Or are you not counting yourself as a person?  Because you’ll have to work some to make us buy you really want to go through that defrosting process again.  Unless you’re a masochist.”

“Enough,” Steve says.  “Don’t…”  Don’t gang up on him.  Bucky looks exhausted and diminished, and Steve wants to just go and find a hole to hide in.  Because he’d looked like that that in a cellar in Berlin, on a quinjet to Siberia and both times Steve had just looked the other way and pretended finding someone to punch would make everything OK. 

Start small perhaps.  There’s another bed opposite Bucky’s.  Steve sits down on it instead of looming over him, hunches forward with his arms on his knees.

He should have crouched down to be on the same eye-level as Bucky in Berlin.  He’d known Bucky had been mind-raped.  But even after Bucky had handed over the intelligence that seemed so important, Steve had just left him to deal with his obvious trauma and misery alone while he concentrated on planning with Sam. 

He’s had time to regret a lot of things.

“I know everything looks bad right now,” he says.  “But treating yourself like a broken weapon isn’t going to help anything get better.  Is being locked in a box, with no control over what happens to you really what you want?”

“You saw the tape.  You saw what I did to Howard.  Can you honestly tell me that what I want should matter a damn?”

“It wasn’t you.”  Steve says firmly.

“Yes.  It.  Was.  It wasn’t my choice, but it was me.  And you know it was.   You don’t want me around, Steve.  You just want someone to talk about him.”

“About who?” Steve says, genuinely confused.

“Other me.  Old Bucky.  The guy who went to funfairs with you in the thirties.  Sure, you’d like him back.  But you know damn well I’m not him.  And you can’t just defrost me every time you feel like a chat about the old days.  That’s not… it’s not fair to ask the Wakandans to go to that much trouble.”

What nearly tears Steve open is that Bucky hasn’t said it’s not fair to do that to him.  The process of revival had so clearly been hell, but he didn’t think he had he had any right to object to being put through that over and over, if that was what Steve wanted.  Sam had been right.  Bucky won’t ask for anything for himself.  Not even to not be put through agony on a whim of someone else’s.

“You are him,” he says as firmly as his voice can manage.  “And of course I want you around.”  Why, why does he sound so stiff?

“You needn’t lie,” Bucky says.  “Whatever you think you owe me, you don’t.  There are better pet projects out there.  I’m not worth the trouble.”

“You’re…”  Steve’s voice flattens, and finds he’s staring at the floor.  “You are not a pet project.”

“I think,” T’Challa says, sounding puzzled, “that what Captain Rogers has done goes beyond pet project.  Would anybody really go that far without a deep personal motive?”

“Yes,” says Bucky at the same moment as Natasha says, “You don’t know much about Steve Rogers, do you?”

Bucky flashes Nat a look that seems… relieved?

“Steve would get himself half-killed for the dumbest reasons back in the days that a stiff wind would knock him over,” Bucky says flatly.  “And half of it wasn’t about me anyway.  That disaster at the airport wasn’t about keeping me in one piece.”

“No,” Natasha agrees.  “I wouldn’t have let you go if I’d thought it was.  No offence.”

“Dumb punk’s always looking for a lost cause,” Bucky says, and Steve’s heart twists treacherously, selfishly at hearing himself called punk again.  “You can’t fix something that’s broke as bad as me by punching people, Steve.”

“Is that what you think I want?” Steve asks, as gently as he can.

Bucky draws in his breath and straightens, seeming to physically wipe away the desolation that had been in every line of his body a moment earlier.    “What do you want?  You tell me.  All you cared about in Bucharest was whether I remembered you.   Never mind who I’d killed or how many as long as you could have your Good Old Days fix.  All you cared about in Berlin was whether I remembered the stuff you wanted about Zemo.  Which was smarter of you, but hell, I’d just got used to you wanting me to be a good little soldier and nothing else, when you start in on the ‘do you remembers’ again.”  His mouth twists suddenly into a smirk that’s down right cruel.  “I’m good at being whatever people want, but you need to give me a briefing.  I can pretend to be him for you.  I can smile and make jokes and let you pretend it’s 1940.  Or I can be your Asset, your attack dog, if you fix up my arm.  I can answer every question plainly, and punch your enemies and ask for nothing as long as I get orders.  Which is it you want?  Your Bucky, or the Winter Soldier?”

“I don’t want you pretending!”  Steve exclaims, then wishes he could take the harshness back, but Bucky seems to thrive on it.

“Yeah, you do.  You don’t want to hear about the mess that’s in here.”  He raises his one hand to point to his head.  “I tried talking about that remember?  On the quinjet.  Oh, you tried to say the right lines, but I've heard more feeling in weather forecasts.  Then you ran straight back to talking about Old Bucky.   Maybe I can switch between roles, if you just fix up a code.  Cough once for Memory Lane and twice for the Asset, maybe.”

Steve feels he’s going to be sick.  Bucky sweeps on.  “Or maybe there’s another way.  There was a mindwipe chair, back at the base.  Maybe we can salvage it.  Maybe if you wipe out everything since ’44 your Bucky will come back.”

Natasha’s vice cuts through, firm and clear.  “Stop it.  This is pose.  I saw a tape of how that chair works.  Even you don’t hate yourself enough for that.”

In a moment it seems like all the will has gone out of Bucky.  He sags forward like a puppet with its strings cut.  “No.  Stupid idea anyway.  I’m no good to anyone with one arm and a head full of HYDRA codes, so you might as well put me back in the freezer and leave me.”

“I’m not doing that!”  Steve says, appalled.  He’s not doing that now he’s seen the true cost to Bucky, been stripped of the notion cyro was some kind of rest cure.

Which he can’t blame Bucky for.  He’d read the file, seen the terrible photographs, walked through that horror hole in Siberia.  He’d been believing what he wanted to.

He can reach out to comfort others, why can’t he do it with Bucky?  He needs to do better.  He remembers Bucky saying, “Ready to comply.”  He’d looked at Steve, and he’d seen a handler. 

Well, wasn’t that what Steve had been acting like?  Pulling Bucky straight back into another fight, without offering him a choice.  Sure he’d thought the world was at stake, but that had all been manipulation, Zemo’s lure.  He hadn’t even asked Bucky if he’d be OK, going back to a place he’d been tortured.

And then he’d stood back and let Bucky put himself through another nightmare, because it was easier than facing that Bucky might be doing this because he hated himself.  Because Steve still wanted to believe that punching a few people in the face was enough to fix the mistake he’d made when he didn’t look for Bucky after the train.  Because he couldn’t face that Bucky was in a world of pain and Steve didn’t even know how to begin to help him. 

“I’m. No. Good. To. You.” Bucky says, like he was explaining to a child of six.  “You know that.  You didn’t want me helping rescue your friends, even when I had two good arms.  You told me to butt out.”

_‘I’ll deal with it….’_

“I didn’t want to burden you.”

“Oh, and when did you ever worry about dragging someone after you in a righteous cause?”

Bucky still knows him far too well. 

“I didn’t want to talk about how badly I’d screwed up,” Steve blurts.  Because he had.  If he’d just called Nat in Berlin all of it could have been avoided.

This seems to give Bucky pause.  But then he shakes his head.  “It’s no use.  I’m no use.  Not now.”

“You don’t have to be of use.”

“That’s rich, coming from Mr ‘I’m no good to the world if the army won’t take me.’”

“I… It’s not the same.”

“How is it not the same?  Apart from the bit about you not being a mass murderer.  Stop trying to pretend, Steve, you’re not much good art it.  Only time you acted like I was a friend was when you were talking about Other Me.”

The problem with that last sentence is it’s true.  Steve hadn’t meant to do that, but the past was the only place he’d felt comfortable.

“You stopped Stark from killing me, which was stupid by the way, and that’s paid off whatever dumb idea you have about owing me.  You’ve met your nobility standard, it’s time to move on to another cause.”

There has to be some way out of this.  Steve telling Bucky he’s wrong isn’t going to work now, even if he could find the right words, which he’s bad at.  He’d missed too many chances.  This is going to take time.  Time for Steve as well, if he’s honest.  Because Bucky isn’t entirely wrong.  He does want his friend from the past back.  He wants the familiar Bucky, the solid rock of Steve’s life, the boy with laughing eyes.   There were times he could hardly bear to look at this haunted man, because the changes hurt and the guilt hurts more.

But he also wants to help the Bucky that exists now.  Because he’s Steve’s friend and because he’s a good man who has been put through hell undeservedly, and because he’s Bucky.  Steve had spent years beating himself up for 1943, for all the times he’d looked the other way, told himself Bucky was fine.  Then he’d spent two years hoping for another chance and when it had come he’d screwed up all over again.  Not even new mistakes.  The same old ones. 

He needs to convince Bucky to stick around.  Everything else comes second.  He doesn’t think T’Challa will agree to put Bucky back in cyro now, especially as it sounds as though his scientists would strongly object, but he might well give Bucky somewhere to stay that’s away from Steve. 

And Steve still believes he can help.  T’Challa is a good man, and he’s sure the Wakandans really want to do what’s best, but he knows all too well that impersonal kindness isn’t a substitute for a true friend.  Maybe his is still filtering everything through his own lens, but he can’t believe Bucky doesn’t want their friendship restored, doesn’t want back the one good thing that still remains from their past. 

He takes a deep breath. 

“No.”

“No?” Bucky repeats.

“No, I haven’t done enough.  You’re right, Buck, a lot of it wasn’t about helping you.  I dragged everyone into that fight at the airport because I was so sure I had to stop the doctor.  Me, nobody else.  And everyone paid, you included.  I owe you so much, and I’ve paid none of it back.”

“You don’t owe me.”

“You were there for me when nobody else was.  I wouldn’t have made it to twenty-five without you.”  He’s murdering a part of himself with those words, the part that always denied he needed Bucky, insisted he would be just fine on his own.  But it’s time to be honest.  “I screwed up on the train.  I got in over my head, you waded in and pulled me out, same as always and you’ve been paying for that ever since.  I’ve not nearly paid my debt back.  And I want to.  Would you really stop me from repaying what I owe you?”

He can see Bucky pause.  They had both been brought up to believe that debts should be paid, after all. 

“I want to help you,” Steve says.  Such a simple sentence.  Why hadn’t he said it in Bucharest, in Berlin, on the quinjet?  Why had he kept letting himself get distracted?  “Please, let me pay my debt.”

There’s a pause.  Steve clings again to the thought that Bucky can’t really want to go back into that icy coffin.  Then Bucky shakes his head. 

“It’s no good, Steve.  You’ve got friends who need you.  It’s not fair to ask them to put up with me.  I’d just be the damned millstone dragging you all down.  You need to think of them first.”

Steve knows there is an answer to this, but while he’s still groping for it Natasha cuts in.

“Maybe you shouldn’t just assume how they’d feel.  I can give you an answer for one at least.”  Heads turn towards her, but instead of going on she hold up a phone and presses a button.

Sam’s voice comes out.  It takes Steve a moment to realise it’s a recording, a talk they’d had during the time Sam was practically browbeating him into going back to Wakanda.  And thank all the heavens for Sam, or Bucky would still be locked in a place Steve now knows was more a torture chamber than a place of safety. 

“ _I am done with your moping, Steve.  This guy was right there, and you shoved him in a fridge and left.  If you’d rather turn your friend into a popsicle than work on your stuff, that’s your problem.  I’m not your therapist.  But you don’t get to do the sad, golden retriever act round the rest of us.”_

There a sound in the background that Steve knows is his reply. 

_“Oh, don’t give me that.  There’s no way in hell he was in the right state of mind to decide something that drastic.  Do I really need to draw you some pictures to explain the difference between respecting choices and helping someone who’s not thinking straight do bad stuff to themselves?  I’ve been around enough messed up folks to know that when someone who is carrying that amount of baggage asks you to do the same thing to them that a bunch of horror show bad guys did, the right answer isn’t ‘Sure buddy whatever you ask for.’”_

Another sound.

_“Nothing.  I’m not his therapist either.  I’m just through with watching you wallow.  And I don’t like stupid.  You not thinking just maybe your friend might feel totally different if he had time to get over Siberia and think about other options?  Totally stupid.   Either you cut out the Captain Sad-face, or you go back, get him out the freezer, and fix this.”_

Bucky makes a choking noise that almost throws Steve into panic before he realises it laughter.  It’s hoarse and its rusty and its nothing like the laugh Steve remembers, but he is laughing.

“I can see why you like this guy,” he says.

“Sam’s not the only one who would rather help you than have more of Captain Sad-face,” Natasha says.  “As for the triggers, we can work on those, but only if you’re actually awake.  Finding a cure while you’re frozen in a block of ice is a non-starter.  I have some old SHIELD contacts who can help.”

“You didn’t tell me that!”  Steve exclaims.

“Because you didn’t ask if I could help,” Natasha says.  “Clint had to get in touch and tell me you were being stupid.  SHIELD dealt with brainwashing a lot.  I can’t say there is a cure, because the files didn’t contain enough detail on what methods were used.”  She turns to Bucky, “We’ll need to talk to you for that.”

“OK,” Bucky is looking dazed.  “I… OK.  If you really think there can be a cure.”

“Did you think there never would be?”  Natasha asks, quite gently for her.  “Did you think nobody would ever come to get you out?”

Bucky’s silence is answer enough. 

OK, Steve will deal with that later.  “Will you give us a chance?”  he says to Bucky.   

Bucky looks at Natasha, “Captain Sad-face?”

“Steve’s been beating himself up about letting you down since 1944,” Natasha says.  “Allowing him to work out his guilt will go us all a good turn.”

Something has changed in the room since Natasha played the tapes.  Some tension has been released.  Bucky looks slowly from Steve to Natasha to T’Challa.

“You may have to stop me hurting people.  I’m dangerous.”

“We’re all dangerous.”  Unexpectedly that comes from T’Challa.  “We were all used by Zemo.”

“We will find a cure for your triggers,” Steve promises.  “And I’ll do everything that can be done to make sure nobody finds us.”

“OK,” Bucky says finally “I’ll try it your way.”

Steve feels a spontaneous smile break out.  “Thank you.”

The scientists insist on Bucky resting some more after that, concerned his physiology might differ more than they had thought from that of a regular human.  He has started to shiver convulsively but dismisses it with a flat, “It’s not important.  I’m just cold.”

It’s hot in Wakanda.  The heat in T’Challa’s buildings isn’t overwhelming, but it’s also nowhere near as cool as air-conditioned buildings in the US tend to be.  Yet Bucky is shivering.

Cold back in Brooklyn had been one thing Bucky hated.  Pretty much the only thing he was guaranteed to complain at length about. 

“Stop martyring yourself, Steve” Natasha says crisply.  “You made a bad call, but you weren’t in much more of a state to think clearly than Barnes was.”

“I feel I’ve been a bit manipulative,” Steve says, because admitting that he is beating himself up about agreeing Bucky should go back into cyro isn’t going to help.  

“Yeah, you were,” Nat says.  “But guilt-tripping Barnes into letting you help him will probably work for now.  I’m quite proud of you being that sneaky.”

Steve doesn’t see Sam again until the evening and when he does it involves walking in on light-hearted exchange of insults between Sam and T’Challa in which the words ‘Catman’ and ‘Birdy’  are getting thrown around a lot.  He hadn’t realised they’d taken such a liking to each other.

Later that evening Sam gives Steve fair warning that next time Steve decides repressing everything is the way to go he’ll remind Steve of the time he stuck his best friend in a freezer rather than deal with his feelings.  “And the time after that.  And the time after that.”

Steve can live with that.  It will probably be good for him. 

**Author's Note:**

> OK, I have so many problems with the Civil War mid-credits but here are a few  
> 1 Cyrofreeze was a stupid idea to start with. Beginning frozen isn’t going to prevent Bucky being reactivated, it didn’t protect the other Winter Soldiers against Zemo. The actual best thing for everyone is to get those codes out of his head as fast as possible, and how can they find a cure when the only known subject is frozen in a box? This is why I think it’s not really about protecting people, it’s about self-hatred and not wanting to burden Steve. And it makes perfect sense that Bucky would feel that way, it’s everyone around him enabling it that’s the problem.  
> 2 I seriously doubt Bucky would have done that if Steve had just TOLD Bucky that he’d like him to stick around. He never, ever does. He’s mostly fight focused except in the ‘Do you remember scene’ which doesn’t show more desire for connection than you’d expect at a school reunion. Bucky outright says he doesn’t think he’s worth it and instead of trying to convince Bucky he does have worth ’ Steve gives a stiff and impersonal answer that fails to address the question.  
> And sure he’s punching people in the face for Bucky, but this is STEVE ROGERS the guy who would rather be beaten to a pulp than back down over a guy shouting at a cinema screen. Bucky knows Steve will go to extreme lengths over issues most people will see as trivial, so how is he supposed to know Steve is doing this because he still cares, rather than because he’s decided he has some kind of obligation? Steve’s manner isn’t showing he cares, except maybe for nostalgia reasons. I love Steve, I do, but I wanted to shake him for not TELLING Bucky how he felt.  
> 3 I honestly don’t think Steve had accepted by the end of Civil War that that Bucky's Winter Soldier experiences are as much a part of him now as the thirties funfairs, and the old Bucky isn't coming back. It’s very noticeable that at the start of the fight with Tony Steve is shouting, ‘It wasn’t him,’ not ‘It wasn’t his fault’ even though Bucky has made it clear that he sees the things he did as part of him. (‘But I did it’). Then there's the fact that the only time Steve was relaxed around Bucky was when he was talking about the version of Bucky that is gone forever. Bucky isn’t stupid, I’m sure he’d picked up on that. Sure I didn't expect Steve to start treating Bucky the same straight away, but the fact his only methods of communication seemed to be impersonal team leader stuff and nostalgia stuck out.  
> 4 Sticking Bucky in that freezer was probably medically unethical. There are major reasons for examining his state of mind to establish whether he wasn’t requesting a procedure that was likely to do physical and emotional damage because he hates himself and thinks he deserves to suffer. At the very least Steve and T’Challa should have insisted on a cooling off period, which clearly didn’t happen as he is still bruised from the fight with Tony. I get thirty days cooling off when changing my car insurance! Didn’t it occur to anyone he might feel differently if he’d had a chance to recover and consider different options?


End file.
